Work Plans: agreeing what a period is for

A task list tells you what you are doing. It does not tell anyone what the next few weeks are for. That is what a work plan is: a named period with an objective, and the work that serves it gathered underneath.

Find them under Work Plans in the Work Center. Three tabs organise the page, each showing a count: All Work Plans, Mine and Awaiting My Review. Start on Mine for your own work and check Awaiting My Review if others send plans to you.

Reading the list

The table shows Work Plan, Where, Period, Owner, Progress and Status. Where tells you which part of the business a plan belongs to, and Owner is the person answerable for it. Between Progress and Period you can see at a glance whether a plan is on pace or quietly behind.

Creating one

Press New Work Plan. The form asks for a Project, which is optional, then a Name, a Start date and an End date, which are required. Then comes the Objective, prompted with What is this plan setting out to achieve?, and a Planned cost.

Spend your effort on the objective. A plan named after a month tells nobody anything; a plan with a clear objective can be judged as either met or not. Write it so that someone reading it at the end can tell which.

Filling it out

A plan can have tasks, lists and goals attached, which is what makes progress real rather than a figure someone types in. The owner can also be changed, so a plan can be handed over when responsibilities shift rather than being rewritten.

The Awaiting My Review tab means plans go through an approval step. Treat that as the useful conversation it is: the moment to disagree about scope is before the period starts, not in the review afterwards.